The Williams Record

No ghoulish tricks for students seeking treats

With age often comes responsibility, and with responsibility comes the demise of fun. Trick-or-treating on Halloween is one such example. By the time most people are in their late teens, they come to accept the awkwardness of waiting behind a three-foot-tall Hannah Montana to ask for candy from a stranger and instead trade in the bounty of bite-sized candy for other … traditional treats. Some people, though, like Alex DiAddezio ’11 and Amanda Davis ’11, say that Halloween shouldn’t be about age at all.

“As long as you’re putting a decent effort into what you’re wearing, I don’t think there is an upper [age] limit,” said Davis. She and DiAddezio certainly put some thought into their Halloween ensembles: Davis dressed as a Christmas present in a gift bag, tissue paper and handles included, while DiAddezio went as Robin Sparkles from How I Met Your Mother (a.k.a. Robin Scherbatsky).

The two seniors unabashedly marched out into the town on Sunday in the Halloween regalia, taking advantage of what they see as their last chance to be a part of the classic American tradition.

In the nearly two hours that they were out, most of the houses where Davis and DiAddezio trick-or-treated were perfectly welcoming to the pair of 20-year-olds that came knocking on their doors. One man, however, was harder to crack. It turned out that the man was interrogating each and every trick-or-treater before he would give them candy. The Williams students, unsurprisingly, did not rate favorably in his eyes. Luckily, they had found allies during their Halloween activity.

“We had made friends with two little girls in front of us, a cat and a vampire,” Davis said, “They came running back and were like ‘You have to give them candy!’ and defended our honor.” The stickler eventually relented and gave Davis and DiAddezio their hard-earned reward.

Another group of students from Amnesty International also decided to participate in the trick-or-treating tradition. However, as the students were trick-or-treating for UNICEF, they did not have to worry about any adverse responses from adults to their presence among the hordes of children. After all, technically they weren’t just trick-or-treating for the sake of it; they were also raising funds for children around the world.

“Basically everyone we went to already had jars of coins out for us, and the people who didn’t went and got some for us,” said Sara Finkle ’13. The students – who included a carrot, a farmer, a Rubik’s cube, Frankenstein and a military tap-dancer – readily admitted that fundraising was a significant, though by no means the sole, reason for their trick-or-treating ventures.

“I think all of us could probably engage in more effective ways of helping the world than collecting change for UNICEF,” said Andrea Lindsay ’13. “We’re all here at Amnesty right now,” Amelia Simmons ’13 interjected. “It’s not like it’s the one thing we’re going to do to help people. Trick-or-treating is fun – and you can do it in a way that helps people.”

The UNICEF group was slightly less prepared than Davis and DiAddezio and didn’t learn that there was a trick-or-treating curfew of 7:30 p.m. until they got out on the streets – at 7:30 p.m. Nevertheless, they found enough obliging houses to raise $20 in change in less than half an hour, not including some foreign currency, when they decided to call it quits. Davis and DiAddezio, who started at 5:30 p.m., went until 7:00 p.m. that night, when they got the feeling that maybe it was time to head home.

“We thought we could hit one more house,” said DiAddezio. “So we went over following all these kids, but then we saw they all knew this woman who was letting them into the house. She just looked at us and just shut the door. So then we officially knew it was over.”
Though it’s common for students to give up their childhood traditions as they transition into college, Davis, DiAddezio, Finkle, Lindsay and Simmons show that maybe responsibility can be put off … at least in the purple bubble.